Expressive Individualism: The Secular Creed's Article on the Self

Every creed has an article on the self — an answer to who the human person is and what gives life meaning. The Apostles' Creed answers: you are a creature made by God, redeemed by Christ, indwelt by the Spirit, and destined for resurrection. The secular creed's answer is different: you are the author of your own identity, and your highest obligation is to express and actualize who you truly are inside.

Philosopher Charles Taylor calls this moral framework 'expressive individualism,' and it is arguably the dominant anthropology of contemporary Western culture. Each person has a unique inner core — a set of feelings, desires, and orientations that define who they really are. External constraints — family expectations, religious norms, social conventions — are threats to authenticity. The good life consists in discovering one's inner truth and expressing it outwardly, regardless of what tradition or community demands.

Expressive individualism shapes nearly every major cultural controversy of our era. The sexual revolution was in large part a campaign for the right to express inner desires without moral or social censure. The ongoing debates about gender identity rest on the premise that the authentic self is located in inner feelings rather than in embodied nature. The therapeutic culture — the language of 'finding yourself,' 'living your truth,' and 'being authentic' — is the pastoral expression of expressive individualism.

Christians must engage this vision with both clarity and charity. Clarity, because expressive individualism is not a neutral anthropology — it is a rival creed that makes claims about human nature, freedom, and flourishing that directly contradict the Christian account. The Bible does not locate the true self in unconstrained inner desire; it locates it in relationship to God. We are not autonomous self-creators; we are creatures made in the image of God, fallen into sin, and redeemable only through grace.

Charity, because expressive individualism often resonates in people's lives because it speaks to genuine needs — for dignity, for recognition, for freedom from external shame and oppression. The church must not simply react against these longings but offer a better answer to them. Christian anthropology grounds individual worth in something more stable than inner feeling — in the image of God and the love of Christ. The freedom the gospel offers is not freedom to become whatever you imagine yourself to be, but freedom from the bondage of sin and the gift of becoming who God made you to be.

'Whoever loses his life for my sake will find it,' Jesus said (Matthew 16:25). This is a radically counter-cultural claim. It insists that the deepest self is not found by looking inward but by dying to self and being raised in Christ. That is the article the Christian creed has always confessed about the self, and it is as urgently needed now as it has ever been.